The Republican platform is too large a document and covers too many issue areas for one person to dissect entirely. I covered my core competency by going through the housing plank. But for those who did have the time and resources to do a full overview, the picture becomes clear that this is a pretty extreme document that, contrary to the beliefs of a John Boehner, does have some import.

The new platform — with its call to reshape Medicare to give fixed amounts of money to future beneficiaries so they can buy their own coverage, its tough stance on illegal immigration and its many calls to shrink the size and scope of government — shows just how far rightward the party has shifted in both tone and substance in the decades since it adopted the 1980 platform, which was considered a triumph for conservatives at the time.

Subtitled “We Believe in America,” the platform keeps its focus on the party’s traditional support for low taxes, national security and social conservatism. And it delves into a number of politically charged issues. It calls state court decisions recognizing same-sex marriage “an assault on the foundations of our society,” opposes gun legislation that would limit “the capacity of clips or magazines,” supports the “public display of the Ten Commandments,” calls on the federal government to drop its lawsuits challenging state laws adopted to combat illegal immigration, and salutes the Republican governors and lawmakers who “saved their states from fiscal disaster by reforming their laws governing public employee unions.”

Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, the chairman of the party’s platform committee, described it as “a conservative vision of governance” in his speech at the convention.

More important, the political science research shows that the platforms do get converted into policy, or at least the attempt is made. One professor at Rutgers University found that victorious parties try to adopt their meaningful platform pledges 70% of the time. “Putting something into the party platform is a pledge that you’re going to do something about it,” Gerald Pomper told the New York Times.

Republicans are trying to downplay their platform – they didn’t release the text until after it was approved – because they don’t really want the country to know about their plans. But now they’ve been made pretty plain.

I can take you around the Web for some of the coverage. Josh Eidelson details the union-busting in the platform, including the support for a national right-to-work law. Brad Plumer runs down a series of other disparate items, including the opposition to the National Popular Vote plan (who knew it was a conservative value to oppose one person, one vote), a call to police universities for liberal bias, statehood for (currently Republican-governed) Puerto Rico but not the (currently Democratic-governed) District of Columbia, stepped-up enforcement of pornography, a reconsideration of the gold standard (already covered here) and this paean to wage slavery in American territories:

No minimum wage for the Mariana Islands. “The Pacific territories should have flexibility to determine the minimum wage, which has seriously restricted progress in the private sector.”

And that’s on top of the known platform planks about Medicare, abortion, pro-gun laws, abstinence-only education, and more. The trade plank is actually somewhat interesting in that it takes a hard line on China and actually bothers to mention currency manipulation, but seeing that John Boehner stopped a bill on similar territory that had majority support in the House and already passed the Senate, I’d say that will be one of the 30% of the planks that doesn’t see action. Then there’s just the stuff that’s clearly been put in to satisfy a donor, like the call for more production of domestic fertilizer.

It will be instructive to compare this platform to the Democratic one when it gets released next week.

36 Responses
to “Republican Platform Lumbers Far to the Right”

It will be instructive to compare this platform to the Democratic one when it gets released next week.

And this is precisely what I intend to do. If it has to be side-by-side comparison, then so be it. I’ve already status’d on Facebook that we should all be reading this unvarnished, unexpurgated, no-spin presentation of what this party stands for. Then read the one issued by the Dems coming next week.

I figure, if one can still vote for Romney (despite his dishonesty in saying he doesn’t support this platform, which is ludicrous) after reading this platform document, then there is little hope for us as a nation.

The Democratic communications director has already said Obama will at least support the platform the party passes. Of course, until I’ve seen it, I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.

You mean the Democratic platform that they conveniently ignore when it’s politically expedient on issues like choice?

That platform?

While it is instructive to read the insane GOP platform and recognize that it IS insane, I find nothing instructive at all about reviewing the Democratic one. I’m pretty sure the Democratic party hasn’t read it in years and I definitely know that they don’t require party members to adhere to the values it espouses.

One can easily criticize the GOP platform for its pandering to a minority of religious and extreme conservative voters. One certainly should do so in fact, and note as well that a majority of Americans certainly support few of the planks within it.

But there are no surprises here and yet the polls show Romney and Obama virtually in a dead heat thus far in the election cycle. I wonder how many progressives question why this may be.

I expect the Democratic Party platform to be a far more centrist document and one more pleasing to a larger segment of the electorate. But none of this explains why the first four years of the Obama administration has failed miserably to keep to the 2008 campaign promises nor gives one much faith in the next four years either.

It is time for a change, and by that I do not mean exchanging one corporatist candidate for another. A vote for Jill Stein will certainly bring no great change to the course of this nations descent into war mongering and fascism, though it may indeed send an important message. Putting Green Party members in Congress may be an uphill battle to be sure, but the struggle may very well be the only way to rescue our system of governance from its enslavement to corporate money.

Denmark would be my choice if I wasn’t so used up and could afford to split this scene before they put up their own Iron Curtain.
They really do seem to be taking the very “best” of the old totalitarian regimes.
That criminalizing dissent thing in the NDAA Obama signed…do they really think that will work?

Jindal was already whining that the federal government wasn’t doing enough to help his state. Apparently making the federal government small enough to drown in a bathtub, just isn’t very practical when YOU face drowning along with it.

“The Democratic communications director has already said Obama will at least support the platform the party passes.”

Well when Obama makes a promise we know he’ll keep it. After all, remember when he went to march with those protesters in Wisconsin, and returned our nation to the rule of law, and let the Bush tax cuts expire?

My governor, Bob McDonnell, is the GOP platform chair. What I find amusing about his proclamations that the abortion position isn’t going to hurt Romney is that he HAS TO know that it isn’t true. In this state, the very state McDonnell governs, we turned back the transvaginal ultrasound requirement based on the fact that it met the state definition of rape. I’m pretty sure if people were hunky dory with forcing rape victims to undergo trauma that the results would have been a lot different. I’m pretty sure that the GOP’s platform on rape and incest victims being required to give birth is going to hurt them, at the very least, in McDonnell’s home state.

@3 – Mitt has already separated himself from some planks of the GOP platform. We will see what the Dems do next week.

@4 -I’m willing to see what the platform says before discrediting it. Another article earlier today states that some 70% of winning platform items find their way into legislation, so don’t be too sure about either party ignoring their respective documents.

Mitt can separate until the cows come home. When the GOP says this is what we plan to do, I believe them.

The opposite is true of the Democratic party. They talk a good game but when it comes to truly advancing values like choice or equality they hedge their bets. That’s why they are just fine with having their anti choice brigade hijacking health care to propose anti choice or okay with having their members say marriage is between a man and a woman even though from a plank position they’ve attempted to paint themselves as advocates for these groups.

“The Republican platform is too large a document and covers too many issue areas for one person to dissect entirely.”

You are giving it far too much credit. It is much simpler than you are making out. Think in terms of fairy tales and child’s fantasies. Also note that it is identical to the Dem platform on all the important issues like war and the economy.

Listened to Ed Schultz and Congressman Peter Welch condemn Paul Ryan for not supporting Bowles-Simpson on Ed’s radio show today. While I can’t vote for these Repub barking loonies, I am so done with Obama and his stooges.

I can understand your personal decision to flee this nation and do not seek to criticize it. I , on the other hand, am born and raised here, am proud of my nation and most of its people, have raised four children and now have fourteen grandkids here and my roots are deeply imbedded in American soil.
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I will not flee as I love my country too much to not try to make it better.
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nixonclinbushbama August 29th, 2012 at 3:35 pm

Yes, voting for Dr. Stein will send a message surely, but trying to put Greens in Congress will do more to keep Progressive politics alive and advance its agenda.

He may think he is Moses, but Moses actually accomplished what he set out to do….At every turn our president has failed to keep his promises, and his party has demonstrated gross incompetence in combating the GOP , whether the opposition was in the majority or the minority.